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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE 
SHAWMUT CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH 
IN BOSTON ON FEBRUARY 14, 1909 



By MOORFIELD STOREY 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE SIIAWMUT CONGRE- 
GATIONAL CHURCH IN BOSTON ON 
FEBRUARY 14, 1909 



MOORFIELD STOREY 



BOSTON 

Geo. H. Ellis Co., Printers, 272 Congress Street 

1909 






>8 






ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



We are met to commemorate the birth of him whom Lowell 
called "the first American." The phrase was well chosen, 
for Abraham Lincoln was the first great leader of this people 
who sprang as it were straight from American soil and grew to 
manhood under purely American influences. He stands pre- 
eminent in our history because he was true to the cardinal prin- 
ciple of American freedom upon which our existence as a nation 
is founded, the great truth that "all men are created equal," and 
lived to make his countrymen adopt and apply it in dealing 
with slavery, the greatest evil that ever afflicted this country. 

I am not here to sketch his biography, but I should like to 
make you realize the conditions of his childhood and youth, for 
they emphasize the lesson of his life. He knew little of his 
ancestors, and apparently owed nothing to inheritance. In his 
first recorded address, made at the age of twenty-three, he said 
truly : " I was born, and have ever remained, in the most humble 
walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations or friends 
to recommend me." His father was an ignorant and shift- 
less carpenter, while of his mother's family he only knew that 
they belonged to the class known as "poor whites" ; and he was 
not tempted to inquire further. He was born in Kentucky, 
but his father was a wanderer, and by successive moves carried 
his family to Indiana and finally to Illinois. His poverty may 
be gathered from the fact that, when Lincoln was seven years 
old, the family lived for a year in a shelter fourteen feet square 
and open on one side to the weather. Lincoln's youth was 
passed in the most squalid surroundings among the rough 
pioneers who laid the foundations of the great West. His 



biographer tells us "that the sum of all the schooling which he 
had in his whole life was hardly one year." Teachers were 
rare and books were few, and little trace of Eastern civilization 
could be detected in the daily lives of the men and women about 
him. His days were spent in the hard work of a new settlement, 
—in felling trees and splitting rails, — among the rude, ignorant, 
kindly, hard-working, hard-drinking, strangely assorted peo- 
ple pushed from the older States by ill-luck or worse, by a crav- 
ing for adventure or by mere restlessness, — the skirmish line of 
civilization which has always preceded the main army of 
settlers as our population has moved westward. 

For a few years before and after he reached the age of 
twenty-one he had some experience in business, first as clerk 
and again as partner in a small country store, but neither 
venture was successful. His leisure time was devoted to read- 
ing and studying law as opportunity offered. He was appointed 
postmaster of a small village when he was twenty-four, he found 
employment as a land surveyor at a time when speculation in 
real estate was active, and in various ways he earned his living, 
but his ambitions were political. At twenty-three he was a 
candidate for the legislature, at twenty-five he was elected, 
and was re-elected three times in succession, being twice the 
candidate of the Whig party for Speaker of the House. In 
1837 he was admitted to the bar and settled in Springfield. 
His first service as representative in the State legislature ended 
in 1842, but in 1844 he was a candidate on the Whig ticket 
for presidential elector, and stumped the State for Henry 
Clay. In 1846 he was nominated for the office of representa- 
tive in the National Congress, and was the only Whig elected 
from Illinois. Add to this that he served as a captain in the 
Black Hawk War, though he saw no fighting, and we get some 
idea of the training which prepared him for the great part which 
he was to take in his country's history. 

As a poor boy among poor settlers, as shop-keeper, post- 
master, surveyor, stump speaker, legislator, and young lawyer 
whose practice was in small matters, he had been from birth 
at every moment in touch with the plain people. Their feel- 



ings were his feelings, he knew their habits, their ways of 
thought, their tastes, their instincts, as a man knows his own 
family. Born in the most wretched circumstances, but with 
abilities and ambitions that carried him to the highest place in 
his country, he could not help believing in the people, and in 
the great principles of free government laid down as everlasting 
truths in the Declaration of Independence. It was from the 
Declaration that he drew the faith which made him, in the 
fulness of time, " the great emancipator." " Nothing of Europe 
here." He was, and he could not help being, American in even- 
fibre of his being; and his life must ever be the strongest argu- 
ment in favor of the political system which makes possible such 
a career as his, and can produce such a ruler. Barren and 
poor as was the soil from which he sprung, that soil was in no 
small measure the source of his rare power. 

Had Lincoln died at the end of his term in Congress, he 
would have been forgotten. He had done and said nothing 
in any way memorable. His life had been like that of many 
another young politician. In 1837 during his second term 
in the legislature of Illinois he had written a protest, signed by 
himself and another member, against certain pro-slavery reso- 
lutions which had passed the legislature, and this protest had 
been spread upon the journal of the House. In this the signers 
declared their belief "that the institution of slavery is founded 
on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of 
abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its 
evils." In 1840 his heart was touched by the sight of twelve 
negroes whom he saw chained together on a steamboat going 
south, and of this he afterwards wrote, "That sight was a con- 
tinued torment to me." While in Congress, he introduced a 
bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia "with the 
consent of the voters of the District and with compensation to 
owners," but there are few references to slavery in his speeches 
or correspondence, and evidently it had not stirred him deeply. 
In a eulogy of Henry Clay delivered in 1852 he stated Clay's 
position on this question in these words: "He ever was on 
principle and in feeling opposed to slavery. . . . He did not 



perceive that on a question of human right the negroes were 
to be excepted from the human race. . . . Cast into life when 
slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated, he did 
not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived, how it 
could be at once eradicated without producing a greater evil 
even to the cause of human liberty itself. His feeling and 
his judgment therefore ever led him to oppose both extremes 
of opinion on the subject. . . . The name and opinions and 
influence of Mr. Clay are fully and as I trust effectually and 
enduringly arrayed against" the extreme abolitionists. "But 
I would also, if I could, array his name, opinions and influence 
against the opposite extreme — against a few but an increasing 
number of men who, for the sake of perpetuating slavery, are 
beginning to assail and to ridicule the white man's charter of 
freedom, the declaration that 'all men are created free and 
equal.'" The views which he attributed to Clay were at 
that time doubtless his own, and it is interesting to observe in 
this early statement that devotion to the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence which he always felt and constantly expressed. 

Such was the equipment and such the faith of Lincoln when 
the final battle against slavery began in 1854, and from that 
time until his death in April, 1865, little more than a decade, 
occurred all that gives Lincoln his enduring claim to the grati- 
tude of his countrymen. When Stephen A. Douglas, then 
senator from Illinois, proposed and carried the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise and thus opened to slavery territory of 
the United States which had been secured to freedom, Lincoln's 
hour had come and the man was ready. Men had foolishly 
thought that the compromise of 1850 had ended the irrepres- 
sible conflict between freedom and slavery, — as if any com- 
promise between right and wrong could endure in a moral 
world! — but now the contest broke forth again, not to end 
until under Lincoln's leadership and mainly by his act slavery 
was forever abolished. In this contest he won his way from 
obscurity to immortality. 

Douglas was then the most aggressive Northern Democrat, 
and was a prominent candidate for the nomination of the Demo- 



cratic party at the next presidential election. The indigna- 
tion excited by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the 
struggle between freedom and slavery in Kansas inevitably 
centred upon him as the author of the repealing statute, and 
this indignation could find effective expression best in his own 
State. He held the centre of the pro-slavery line, and Lincoln 
as the Whig leader in Illinois was pitted against him. More- 
over, when Congress met in December, 1853, the country was 
overwhelmingly Democratic. The Whigs at the election of 
1852 had carried only Massachusetts, Vermont, Kentucky, 
and Tennessee. The anti-slavery sentiment was naturally 
strongest in New England, New York, and parts of Ohio, 
but Illinois and Indiana had never been enlisted on that side. 
To convert them meant victory for freedom in the whole coun- 
try. For those reasons the struggle in Illinois interested the 
whole nation. The debate continued at intervals from 1854 
to i860, and during these six years by his masterly discussion 
of the slavery question Lincoln made himself the leader of the 
Republican party. 

In this memorable contest Lincoln displayed clear thinking, 
remarkable power of statement, great moral force, and a simple 
direct style which was wonderfully effective. Douglas, a native 
of Vermont, the son of a physician and educated in the schools 
of Vermont and New York, showed himself a demagogue, 
constantly appealing to the prejudices and passions of his 
audiences. Lincoln, the son of the soil, brought up among 
the people, proved his faith in them by addressing himself to 
their reason and their conscience. He spoke to the best that 
was in his hearers, he never descended to personality or abuse 
or tried to carry his audience by any trick of rhetoric. The 
absence of heat in his speech made it the more convincing. 
As we read the great debate, we feel that Lincoln's argument 
was like fate, passionless, impersonal, inexorable. He treated 
his opponents courteously, he met their arguments fairly, and 
he triumphed by the strength of his case and the sheer force 
of his reasoning. He felt as he said that "the human heart 
is with us. God is with us," and with such allies it was sacri- 



lege to degrade and obscure the great issue by attacks on men. 
He honored the people by giving them his best, and, respond- 
ing to his appeal, they justified his faith. 

He rested his case against slavery upon foundations which 
could not be shaken. He insisted that it was morally wrong, 
and that its existence was inconsistent with the principles upon 
which our government rests. His biographers have published 
among his works certain fragments, probably notes for speeches, 
written about this time while he was thinking out the way to 
present the question. In the first of these on slavery, written 
about July i, 1854, we find 

"Most governments have been based practically on the 
denial of the equal rights of men. . . . Ours began by 
affirming those rights. They said, some men are too 
ignorant and vicious to share in government. Possibly 
so, said we; and by your system you would always keep 
them ignorant and vicious. We proposed to give all a 
chance; and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the 
ignorant wiser, and all better and happier together." 

Our political faith could not be stated better. 
Again he said: — 

"The doctrine of self-government is right — absolutely 
and eternally right. ... If the negro is a man, is it not to 
that extent a total destruction of . self-government to say 
that he, too, shall not govern himself! When the white 
man governs himself, that is self-government; but when 
he governs himself and also governs another man, that is 
more than self-government — that is despotism. . . . No 
man is good enough to govern another man without that 
other's consent. I say that is the leading principle, the 
sheet-anchor of American republicanism. . . . Allow all the 
governed an equal voice in the government, and that and 
that only is self-government." 

In another speech he said: — 

"I suggest that the difference of opinion, reduced to its 



lowest terms, is no other than the difference between the 
men who think slavery a wrong, and those who do not 
think it wrong. The Republican party think it wrong— we 
think it is a moral, a social and a political wrong. We 
think it a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons 
or the States where it exists, but that it is a wrong which 
in its tendency affects the existence of the whole nation." 

Throughout the long discussion between the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise and his election to the Presidency, in one 
form or another these two ideas were steadily pressed, — slavery 
is wrong, and it is inconsistent with the Declaration of In- 
dependence, — until in Independence Hall at Philadelphia, on 
his way to be inaugurated, he made his memorable statement: — 

"I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not 
spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration 
of Independence. ... I have often inquired of myself what 
great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy 
so long together. It was not the mere matter of separation 
of the colonies from the motherland, but that sentiment 
in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty not 
alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the 
world for all future time. It was that which gave promise 
that in due time the weights would be lifted from the 
shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal 
chance. . . . Now, my friends, can this country be saved on 
that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the 
happiest men in the world if I can help to save it. . . . 
But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that 
principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassi- 
nated on this spot than surrender it." 

With no experience in executive office, with but slight knowl- 
edge of Washington and even of the Republican leaders who 
were to be his associates in carrying on the government, but 
strong in this faith, he took the helm of state at the greatest 
crisis in his country's history, and in this faith he conquered. 

His wonderful career as President is familiar to you all, 



8 

and, if it were not, I could not tell it in the few moments at my 
command. When he was inaugurated, men could only conject- 
ure what he was. They doubted his capacity and lamented the 
chance which had placed him in power over the heads of leaders 
like Seward, Chase, Sumner, and others whose ability was 
known. His personal appearance, exaggerated by caricature 
of pen and pencil, repelled some who could not look below the 
surface. Tom Taylor in his eulogy after the assassination 
paints it in few words: — 

"His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face, 
His gaunt gnarled hands, his unkempt bristling hair, 
His- garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, 
His lack of all we prize as debonair, 
Of power or will to shine, of art to please." 

We were not wont to associate such peculiarities with our 
president, and we wondered. 

He came from a small Western town to the most conspicuous 
and the most difficult place then held by man. The eyes of 
the civilized world were fixed upon him, and he stood "in the 
fierce light that beats upon a throne." 

"God's plan 
And measure of a stalwart man, 
Limbed like the old heroic breeds, 
Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth, 
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, 
Fed from within with all the strength he needs." 

He stood there for four years, as if to show that the man of 
humblest origin could with equal opportunity make himself the 
equal of the highest, and in his own person to prove that the 
principles of free government are everlasting truths. His 
courage, his wisdom, his honesty, his unfailing patience, his 
faith, his simplicity, his absolute unselfishness, his single- 
hearted devotion to his task, his freedom from personal feeling 
or jealousy, his tolerance of others, and, when occasion required, 
his masterful power over men were gradually recognized until 
the people trusted him as they never trusted man before or 



since; until the severest of his critics, whether at home or abroad, 
could say with Taylor: — 

"He had lived to shame me from my sneer, 
To lame my pencil and confute my pen, 
To make me own this hind of princes peer, 
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men," — 

in a word, until this son of an ignorant pioneer was recognized 
as the greatest ruler of his time, — among the greatest rulers 
of all times, and we could say of him as Motley said of William 
the Silent, "As long as he lived he was the guiding star of a 
whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried 
in the streets." 

For mv purpose to-night I may state his course as President 
in a few words. He knew that slavery was the cause of the 
Civil War, and that no lasting reunion was possible unless it 
was destroyed. He knew that the people of the North were 
divided upon the question, that the border States where slavery 
existed were enlisted in its behalf, and that, if slavery was at- 
tacked, they might secede and enormously increase our diffi- 
culties. He knew that slavery in the States where it existed 
was protected by the Constitution which he had taken an oath 
to maintain; and this oath he was determined to keep. When, 
however, it became apparent to all thinking men that the slaves 
were the support of the Southern armies, and that it was at least 
doubtful whether we could save the Union without destroying 
slavery, when public opinion was ripe and the country was 
behind him, he did not hesitate. It seemed to many that he was 
very slow to strike, but in less than eighteen months after 
Sumter was attacked he issued his preliminary proclamation 
of emancipation. As we look back, how swiftly he moved! 

On January i, 1863, ms ^ na ^ proclamation freed the slaves 
then held in the seceded States, and the Thirteenth Amendment 
for which he labored crowned the work. Slavery had drawn 
the sword, and in accordance with the stern law of retribution 
it perished by the sword. For the first time in the history of 
the country the "self-evident" truths announced in the Decla- 
ration of Independence were recognized and sanctioned by the 



IO 

Constitution of the United States. For the first time all men 
under our flag were free; and by Lincoln more than by any other 
man this great triumph was won. Many had labored long and 
faithfully for the cause, many had suffered obloquy, loss, 
wounds, and even death at the hands of the mob; thousands 
of our bravest and best had laid down their lives on the battle- 
field before the end came, and high honor is due them all. I 
would not take from any one his share of praise; but Lincoln 
stands apart, and, to describe him, let me borrow the words of 
Lowell : — 

"For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 

Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, 
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, 

Not lured by any cheat of birth, 

But by his clear-grained human worth 
And brave old wisdom of sincerity! 

They knew that outward grace is dust; 

They could not choose but trust 
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill 

And supple-tempered will 
That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. 

Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
But at last silence comes; 
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 
Our children shall behold his fame, 
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
New birth of our new soil, the first American." 

I will add the words of his biographer, Mr. Morse, in regard 
to one great quality, which was in no small part the secret of 
his success: — 

"By his position he had more at stake, both in his life- 



II 



time and before the tribunal of the future, than any other 
person in the country. But there was only one idea in 
his mind, and that was — not that he should save the coun- 
try, but that the country should be saved. Not the faint- 
est shadow of self ever fell for an instant across this 
simple purpose. He was intent to play his part out 
faithfully with all the ability he could bring to it; but any 
one else, who could, might win and wear the title of 
savior. . . . Never once did he manipulate any covert 
magnet to draw toward himself the credit or the glory 
of a measure or a move." 

"Let his great example stand 
Colossal, seen of every land, 



Till in all lands and thro' all human story 
The path of duty be the way to glory." 

And now, a century after his birth, men are met all over this 
country to do him honor. Why? Why are we here? Not 
for his sake, nor because any word or thought of ours can 
affect his fame. That is established "far above our poor 
power to add or detract." His place on the page of history 
is secure. We meet here for ourselves. Such ceremonies are 
the merest waste of speech and time unless they make our own 
lives better. 

Why do we honor Lincoln ? Not because he was a President 
of the United States. Men have held that office whom we have 
forgotten or would gladly forget. Not because he signed the 
proclamation of emancipation. A far inferior man in his 
place might have been driven to do that by military necessity. 
We reverence Lincoln because through his rough exterior, 
through his simple and eloquent speech, through his historic 
acts, through the whole record of his life, we recognize a great 
moral power, because he had the faith and courage to save 
this nation by upholding and applying the principles of free 
government upon which it was founded, because he is the 
embodiment and exponent of the fundamental political truth 
that all men have equal rights and are entitled to equal oppor- 



12 



tunities under the law, because he is the best representative 
of the ideals for which this country stands and which every 
citizen should cherish. 

How genuine is our reverence! Do we honor Lincoln only 
with our lips? "If you love me, keep my commandments." 
If we really honor him, must we not show it by carrying on the 
work which he began, by holding aloft the standard which 
dropped from his dying hand? "He, being dead, yet speak- 
eth." How often do we quote his words! You have just heard 
them, but they cannot be repeated too often. 

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought 
forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty 
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
equal. 

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether 
that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated 
can long endure. 

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great 
task remaining before us— that from these honored dead 
we take increased devotion to that cause for which they 
gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highlv 
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that 
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, 
and that government of the people, by the people, and for 
the people shall not perish from the earth." 

"The great task remaining before us" then, is not yet done. 

When Lincoln began his battle against slavery, it was in- 
trenched in the Constitution. Slaves were chattels, and the 
United States had no power to make them men. When the 
battle ended, slavery had ceased to exist, and instead of being 
protected it was prohibited by the Constitution. That was 
Lincoln's work. He found four millions of negro slaves. We 
have to deal with ten millions of colored freemen. They are 
living in their own country, the land where they and their 
fathers before them were born. They are as much Americans 



i3 

as we. They have every legal and political right which any 
American citizen has. They are in every respect our equals 
before the law, and the United States is bound to see that their 
rights are respected. We owe them much. Their fathers 
were brought here against their will by ours, and held in bond- 
age for two hundred and fifty years. If they are poor and 
ignorant, it was their white masters who left them so. For 
any evils or difficulties which spring from the presence of the 
colored race in this country the white race is responsible, and 
upon the white race, therefore, rests the duty of repairing the 
wrong which it has done. These propositions cannot be 
denied. 

But men now speak of a race problem. Let me state this 
problem as it was stated a few weeks ago by Senator Frazier, 
of Tennessee : — 

"The exigencies of civil war freed the slave, but the 
black man remained, and with him a problem unparalleled 
in its difficulties. Mark those difficulties: Two races, 
nearly equal in numbers, but utterly and wholly dissimilar. 
The one educated, proud, and aggressive; the other igno- 
rant, idle, and superstitious. The one with a thousand 
years of civilization stretching out behind it; the other but 
a few centuries removed from barbarism. The one but 
a generation ago in bondage to the other, yet each made, 
by law, equal in civil and political rights. Thus situated, 
they are asked to dwell together, on the same soil and 
under the same skies, in peace and harmony, without 
the one race dominating the other. 

"Mr. President, the people whom I have the honor in 
part to represent here have dealt fairly, kindly, even 
generously, by the negro. . . . But, Mr. President, I would 
not be entirely frank if I did not say that upon certain 
phases of the race question they, in common with the 
rest of the South, have stood, and I believe will ever stand, 
firm and unalterable. First, never again will the negro 
race be allowed to politically dominate and control a sov- 
ereign State of this Union. To do so would be to enthrone 



14 

ignorance and give it dominion over intelligence, and to 
bring back the rapine and utter and reckless debauchery of 
the reconstruction era. Second, the social barrier which 
separates the races will never be allowed to be lowered. 
To do so would destroy the purity and integrity of the 
white race, and shock the sensibilities and outrage the 
moral sense of the Caucasian race the world over. 

"Mr. President, for forty years and more, in patience 
and kindness, the people of the South have wrestled with 
this problem, which is racial, not political. It is still un- 
solved. What the end will be only God, in His infinite 
wisdom, can see. Shall it be that the black race will be 
deported ? If feasible, it would remove the last remaining 
barrier to the complete unity of the American people. 
Shall it be a race war, — bloody, fierce, exterminating, — a 
war for the survival of the fittest? God forbid! Shall it 
be amalgamation and the unspeakable horror of a cor- 
rupted and inferior race? To allow it would be to destroy 
that civilization which is at once our strength and our 
pride. Shall it be that the two races will dwell together, 
and yet apart, in peace and harmony ? To do so without 
the one race dominating and ruling the other would be 
to belie the universal verdict of racial history. I do not 
know. But one thing I do know, Mr. President, that the 
solution of this problem rests primarily in the hands of 
the Southern white man and the Southern black man, and 
calls for the wisest counsel and broadest conservatism of 
both." 

Let us reduce this statement to its essential propositions and 
examine them. The claim is that the colored men are inferior 
to white men; that they cannot be allowed to become the politi- 
cal or social equals of the whites lest civilization suffer, the 
purity of the white race be destroyed, and resulting inter- 
marriage produce "a corrupted and inferior race"; and that 
they can only dwell together peacefully if the whites are allowed 
to dominate. The other possibilities suggested are sending 



15 

these fellow-citizens as exiles to Africa or a bloody war of 
extermination, both impossible, or the amalgamation of the 
two races. 

The race problem arises from the determination of the white 
race to deny the equal rights of their colored fellow-citizens. 
It is the white man, not the colored man, who creates it. The 
whites, because they are white, claim the right to hold their 
fellow-men down because they are dark. When that determi- 
nation is abandoned, the problem is settled. In the North and 
South alike, men talk of a "race problem" and foster "race 
prejudice" because they are afraid that their dark neighbors 
may become their equals. Employment for which the colored 
man and woman are entirely fit is denied them because they are 
colored. Labor unions exclude them. They are denied the 
protection of the law in Northern as well as Southern States, 
and when, in the very city which is proud that it was Lincoln's 
home, an orgy of riot and bloodshed occurs, stimulated by race 
prejudice and resulting in the robbery and murder of excellent 
citizens because they are colored, the perpetrators of these 
crimes go unpunished because the juries will not convict. 
Springfield pretends to honor Abraham Lincoln, while it tells 
the country that no law protects the homes and the lives of its 
colored citizens, and they may be plundered and killed with 
impunity. 

The spirit which made slavery possible is stronger than it 
was when Lincoln died. It is the cruel, selfish, unchristian 
determination of the whites that colored men shall not have an 
equal chance in life with them that creates our race problem, 
and it is the white race that must be taught to do justice. 

There is no natural prejudice of color. Too many white 
babies of delicate birth have nestled contentedly in the arms of 
colored nurses and have learned to call them "Mammy," 
too many white and colored children have grown up as play- 
mates in close daily association, too many mulattoes in whose 
veins flowed the best blood of the white race have been born, to 
leave any ground for believing that a native repulsion keeps 
the races apart. The prejudice comes with years, and is cul- 



i6 

tivated and cherished. It becomes fashionable, and the un- 
thinking adopt it to prove their superiority. It spreads from 
community to community, like a contagious disease. The 
prejudice which in some countries has long existed against the 
Jews, the feeling between the English and the Irish, the hos- 
tility between men of different nations which inevitably follows 
war, the religious antipathies which lighted the fires of Smith- 
field and led to the internecine struggles between Catholics and 
Protestants in both the Old and the New World, were quite as 
strong and quite as easy to cherish, and our color prejudice can 
be banished as these have been banished by all reasonable men. 

The argument which I have quoted defeats itself. If the 
negroes are by nature inferior to the whites, and the invincible 
barrier of race prejudice keeps them apart, how can the ques- 
tion of social equality arise? Where is the danger of inter- 
marriage, with the resulting corrupted race? Is it really prob- 
able that the whites will deliberately select as their friends and 
associates, as their husbands or wives, persons who are in all 
respects their inferiors, and against whom they have an uncon- 
querable prejudice? Admit that a few cases of marriage be- 
tween exceptional individuals may occur, can the association 
become common? Is a race capable of such action really 
superior? The alternative is clear. Either the colored race 
is not hopelessly inferior, or social equality is impossible. 

If no education can make the colored race equal to the 
white, there is no reason why we should not give colored chil- 
dren all the education which they are capable of receiving. 
Senator Frazier says that they are "ignorant, idle, and super- 
stitious," and that because they are so their presence in the 
community creates a problem. Is it wise statesmanship to 
aggravate this problem by keeping them ignorant and super- 
stitious? The remedy for these conditions is education, and 
the great enemies of the Southern States to-day are the men 
who speak and work against educating the colored race. 
Lincoln's words in 1854 answer them as he answered Douglas 
then : — 

"They said, some men are too ignorant and vicious to 



17 

share in government. Possibly so, said we; and, by your 
system, you would always keep them ignorant and vicious." 

These men would make the problem permanent and give us 
no hope of better things. There is no answer to the question 
which the late Carl Schurz put to his Southern friends: "How 
do you expect to succeed in competition with neighboring 
communities, if your policy is to keep your laborers ignorant 
and degraded, while their policy is to educate and elevate theirs ? " 

If, as Senator Frazier thinks, the negro can never by any 
education be made the equal of the white, the danger of a min- 
gling between the two races on terms of social equality is the 
merest bugbear. The negro will be better than he is, but still 
inferior. 

If, on the other hand, education will make him the equal of 
the white, we are bound to help him to such education. It is 
his right. If colored men thus become our equals, there is no 
reason why we should not meet them as equals. If we do not, 
prejudice only will keep us apart. Booker Washington, Pro- 
fessor Dubois, and many others are welcome guests, and are well 
entitled to welcome, at the tables of the most highly educated 
and refined people in this country. Why should they not be? 
How many white men can look back on a life of such achieve- 
ment, of such triumph over obstacles seemingly unsurmount- 
able, as Mr. Washington ? He shames us all. I firmly believe 
that in the years to come our children will be as much 
ashamed of our color prejudice as we are of the mob that 
burned the Ursuline convent. 

The danger of "amalgamation and the unspeakable horror of 
a corrupted and inferior race" is not increased, but diminished, 
by elevating the colored race. When the negroes were slaves, 
was there no corruption of blood ? When the offspring of a 
mixed relation, no matter how slight the percentage of colored 
blood, could be bought and sold, the relations between master 
and slave were notorious, and many a white father has sold his 
own son into slavery. There was no fear then of a corrupted 
race. Elevate the colored man and the colored woman, and you 
will increase their respect for themselves and for their race. 



i8 

Then color will create a barrier far stronger than ever existed 
when the colored race were slaves. The more you lift a man 
above the level of the brute, the less likely is he to commit the 
crimes of a brute. Lead these people up. Do not crush them 
down. 

A few weeks ago in Virginia a man and woman were sen- 
tenced to eighteen years in prison for the crime of marrying each 
other. The man thought he was colored, and before slavery 
was abolished he was colored, since he had negro blood in his 
veins. If there had been no ceremony of marriage, there would 
have been no such imprisonment, but the effect on the race 
would have been the same. What must we say of a community 
where marriage is a crime and illicit intercourse a venial off ence ? 
A civilization such as this is hardly "a strength" or "a pride." 

There is only one remedy for the negro problem, and that is 
justice. The negro has the moral and the legal right to equal 
opportunities with ourselves. To deny these rights is flagrant 
injustice, and any injustice injures both the man who suffers 
and the man who does it, but the latter suffers most. Slavery 
cost the white man more than it ever cost the colored man in 
America. We can estimate the number of men who died in 
the Civil W T ar, but we cannot estimate the loss to the country of 
the brains and character which perished with them, nor can we 
imagine even how much stronger and better their posterity 
might have made the nation, had they lived to rear families. 
We can count approximately the dollars that we spent and are 
still spending for war and its consequences, but no man can 
guess how much our civilization has lost through the legacy 
of hatred, bitterness, prejudice, and brutality which the war 
left behind it. "The bloody shirt" and the Ku-Klux Klan of 
the years that are gone, the lynchings, the burnings, the night- 
riders, the race problem of to-day, — these are the penalties 
which we have paid and are paying for two hundred and fifty 
years of cruel injustice. Do we want another such terrible 
lesson? For our own profit we made slaves of our fellow-men; 
but "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world 
and lose his own soul?" Cannot we learn from our bitter 



l 9 

experience how much injustice costs! Must we persist in try- 
ing to keep down the race which it is our duty and our interest 
to lift up! 

Does a dread of social equality excuse injustice! Society 
protects itself. Men of very different characters, tastes, asso- 
ciations and incomes live together in every community. Those 
associate together who like each other, whose tastes and ideas 
are the same. We all live near fellow-citizens who perhaps 
speak a different language and certainly lead very different 
lives from our own. We do not think it necessary to deny 
their legal rights or to keep them ignorant, lest they invade 
our houses and marry our daughters; and, unless the colored 
race is peculiarly attractive to the white, there is no reason 
why they should not live side by side, as all over our land men 
live side by side, enjoying the same rights and privileges, but 
never having social relations with each other or even knowing 
each other's names. White men and black men have so 
lived for years in almost every State of this Union. 

This is not a problem for the Southern people alone. Under 
the Constitution as it was before the Civil War the slaveholders 
had absolute power over their slaves. The government of 
the United States was powerless to interfere, and then, if ever, 
slavery was a problem for the slave States. They dealt with 
the black man as they would, but the injustice which was done 
him brought death into hundreds of thousands of homes in 
States where slavery was unknown. The blood of Massachu- 
setts was spent as freely as the blood of South Carolina. The 
lesson which we learned then will never be forgotten. Shall 
we go to war with Spain to free Cuba and send a new army 
to pacify her when revolution threatens? Shall our President 
protest against injustice to the Jews in Russia, and are we 
not to care whether our own fellow-citizens are denied their 
rights and subjected to oppression in our own country, when 
the Constitution makes it the duty of the government to see 
that their rights are maintained ? We are too closely bound 
together, and under every form of government, whether we 
realize it or not, an injury to the poorest citizen is an injury 



20 

to the State. Night-riding in Kentucky spreads North and 
South; unpunished lynching in Mississippi makes every 
colored man's, nay, every white man's life in the country less 
secure. Springfield and other Northern cities learn the lesson 
easily, and the methods which are familiar in dealing with 
colored men are soon applied to white. The race problem 
concerns every man, woman, and child in the United States, 
and it cannot be left to men who announce their purpose to 
perpetuate injustice. 

We have only to look at California and Nevada to see how 
race prejudice in a State threatens our peace as a nation. We 
insist that American citizens must be admitted by China and 
Japan and be at liberty to travel or reside there at pleasure, 
we demand for our commerce "the open door," but two of 
our States undertake to keep Chinese and Japanese citizens 
out of their bounds, and to load them with insult and indig- 
nity. They are willing to involve this whole nation in war, 
perhaps, rather than receive them on any terms. A large 
majority of the world's inhabitants are colored, and we in our 
absurd conceit arrogate to every white man superiority over 
any colored man. Yet we are afraid to meet them on equal 
terms even where we are in an enormous majority. The basis 
of race prejudice is selfishness and fear. There are some 
seventy-one thousand Japanese in this country, and white 
Americans are afraid that these men may take the bread out 
of our mouths. There are some ten millions of negroes, 
and their white neighbors fear that, unless they are kept as 
hewers of wood and drawers of water, they will assert a social 
equality and intermarry to such an extent as to degrade our 
people. This is not the feeling of a superior race, but the 
cowardice of men who dare not treat their fellow-men justly 
lest they beat them in the race of life. It is a confession of in- 
feriority. 

Can a race of such superior intelligence as ours fail to see 
that we cannot with impunity deny their rights to our own 
colored fellow-citizens and insult the most powerful Asiatic 
nations at the same time, without sooner or later paying the 



21 

penalty? We cannot make men buy of us, and the loss of 
the Chinese and Japanese markets would be a great blow to 
our prosperity. The time will come to us, as it comes to every 
mortal, when we shall need friends. Are we wise in turning 
the friends we have into enemies? We thought the Japanese 
barbarous fifty years ago, because they did not admit us to their 
country. What are we now? 

Not content with a race problem bequeathed to us by our 
ancestors at home, we set at naught the principles and counsels 
of Lincoln, and cross the ocean to make a new race problem 
for ourselves thousands of miles from our shores. We have 
conquered the Philippine Islands and are holding their inhabi- 
tants as our subjects outside the Constitution and against 
every principle which we have hitherto maintained. If Mr. 
Taft and Governor Smith are both right, our experiment can- 
not succeed. 

Mr. Taft in an address before the Union Reading College, 
Manila, on December 17, 1903, said: — 

" Were I assured that the present attitude of the major- 
ity of American merchants and the American press would 
be permanent, and if I did not confidently hope that there 
must be a great change in the future, I should be very 
much discouraged in respect to the result of the experi- 
ment which the United States is making in these islands. 

"A purely racial hatred is one of the most difficult things 
possible to overcome, and, if it is founded on permanent 
conditions, it is almost hopeless to look for its ceasing. 
But I am not discouraged, because I am sure that the 
next decade will change the conditions in the respects 
which I have described — changing them most radically." 

Half that decade is gone, yet Governor Smith in his annual 
message to the Philippine Assembly, February 1, 1909, deplores 
"the growing gulf between the Americans and the Filipinos in 
the Philippines." That it is growing is sure, and that it 
will continue to grow is equally sure. When men in their 
own land are treated as inferiors by a race of foreign invaders, 



22 

they cannot help hating the foreigners with a steadily grow- 
ing hatred, and, alas, there is no hope that Americans will soon 
admit that colored men are their equals. 

Let Lincoln state the argument by which our adventure is 
defended and the reply: — 

"Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race 
are to be treated with as much allowance as they are 
capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them 
as their condition will allow — what are these arguments? 

"They are the arguments that kings have made for 
enslaving [the people in all ages of the world. You will 
find that all 'the arguments in favor of king-craft were 
always of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the 
people — not that they wanted to do it, but because the 
people were better off for being ridden. . . . Turn it in 
whatever way you will — whether it come from the mouth 
of a king, an excuse for enslaving the people of his 
country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a 
reason for enslaving the men of another race — it is all the 
same old serpent." 

"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and 
axioms of free society. And yet they are denied and 
evaded with no small show of success. One dashingly 
calis them 'glittering generalities.' Another bluntly calls 
tnem 'self-evident lies.' And others insidiously argue 
that they apply to 'superior races.' These expressions, 
differing in form, are identical in object and effect — the 
• supplanting the principles of free government and restor- 
ing those of classification, caste and legitimacy. . . . They 
are the vanguard, the miners and sappers of returning 
despotism. We must repulse them or they will subjugate 
us. This is a world of compensation, and he who would 
be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who 
deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, 
under a just God, cannot long retain it." 

Lincoln taught human equality and opposed a government 



23 

of men without their consent always and everywhere. If 
we really honor him, must we not respect his teachings and 
follow his example? We revere him for his great utterances. 
Are they not true? The source of the race problem is in our 
own race, and it is this which we must educate. If we really 
admire Lincoln, let us dare to adopt his principles. Let us 
look into our own hearts and cease to cherish any feeling that 
our neighbor of whatever color is below us. Men and races 
have various qualities. The captain of industry may have 
strength, judgment, and skill in making money, but in those 
qualities which are blessed in the Sermon on the Mount he 
may be distinctly inferior to many a humble workman in his 
employ. Let Lincoln speak: — 

"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty 
rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that 'All 
men are created equal.' We now practically read it 
'All men are created equal except negroes.' When 
the Know Nothings get control, it will read 'All men are 
created equal, except negroes and foreigners and Catho- 
lics.' When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating 
to some country where they make no pretence of loving 
liberty — to Russia for instance, where despotism can be 
taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy." 

This was in August, 1855, when the Know Nothing party 
had carried many States and its members were afraid that 
Catholics and foreigners threatened our safety. 

That foolish panic, that lamentable brutality, have passed. 
We no longer think that men whose religious opinions differ 
cannot live in peace side by side. The prejudice of color has 
taken its place, and it is just as childish and unreasonable. 
Now our version of the Declaration is, "All men are created 
equal except negroes, Filipinos, Chinese, and Japanese." 
We are still degenerate, and our troubles at home and abroad, 
our race problem, our Philippine difficulties, our difficulties 
with Japan and China, come because we are not true to our- 
selves, because we will not admit that all men are equal, but 



24 

instead deny that the same blood flows in the veins of "all the 
nations upon earth." Of all civilized peoples we, whose gov- 
ernment rests on human equality, cultivate the race prejudice 
most sedulously. Those to whom we deny equality represent 
the best of the colored races, the great nations of China and 
Japan, whose civilization is more ancient than our own, the 
Christian freedom-loving Filipinos, the best of the African 
race. Are we so blind as not to see what such a denial must 
cost us? 

Let every man who honors the memory of Lincoln prove 
that this honor is not mere lip-service, by resolving with him 
that the men who died at Gettysburg "shall not have died in 
vain"; and that the great principle that "all men are created 
equal" shall become in very truth the faith of all this great 
nation. Let us say with Charles Sumner: — 

"Show me a creature with lifted countenance looking 
to heaven made in the image of God, and I show you a 
man who, of whatever country or race, whether bronzed 
by equatorial sun or blanched by polar cold, is with you a 
child of the Heavenly Father and equal with you in all 
the rights of human nature." 

Thus and thus onlv can we fitly honor Abraham Lincoln. 



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